


Second Chances

by AifasInTheSky



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life VR but the AI is Self-Aware - Fandom
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mention of Child Injuries, Misunderstandings, Time Travel, Vomiting, injuries, please lemme know if I'm forgetting any triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25383223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AifasInTheSky/pseuds/AifasInTheSky
Summary: Gordon has a shitty day. And a very powerful friend.
Relationships: Benrey & Joshua Freeman, Gordon Freeman & Joshua Freeman, Tommy Coolatta & Gordon Freeman
Comments: 10
Kudos: 132





	Second Chances

“Dad!”

Gordon groggily starts to wake up, only for Joshie to jump onto his belly. Oof.

“Ugh… Slow down, little Freeman.”

He’s suddenly acutely aware of the arm looping around his waist.

“Get off, man!” he yells, grabbing Benrey’s wrist. Joshie whines. “N-not you, Joshie! Well, yes, but—damn it!”

“No cursing, bro,” Benrey says, sounding amused. Joshie looks confusedly at both of them.

“Daddy, that means Uncle Benny is my papa now?”

What? What?! “No!” He sits up, catching Joshie just in time to avoid making him fall off the bed—phew. “He’s just—I—”

“I can be your papa if you want,” Benrey says.

“Not helping, Benrey!” Ugh, he’s getting a headache just from this.

“Yeah! Papa Benny is super cool!”

Both kid and eldritch monstrosity fistbump each other, and Gordon wonders what he did in a past life to have to deal with this.

“Come on, let’s get started. You have school today, Joshie.”

Joshie groans, but complies, getting off the bed and walking towards the bathroom. Benrey chuckles. “Cool kid,” he says. “Not shit at all.”

“You.” Gordon points a finger at Benrey. Shut up. Don’t start giving my kid ideas. You were just sleeping here because—”

“I was helping you, right?” he says, looking deadpan at him. “Grown Freeman can’t sleep and needs Benrey’s Sweet Voice to—”

“I know,” he says cuttingly. Benrey blinks at him. He sighs, pinching his brow. “I know. Thank you. Can we please move on and agree this—” he points at his waist and Benrey’s arm “—never happened?”

“What if I don’t wanna?”

Benrey’s eyes shine with something that absolutely terrifies Gordon. He can’t deal with feelings this early. Not like this.

“Just… Go help Joshua with his breakfast.” Benrey’s eyes get dimmer, but he perks up a bit. Oh, no. Benrey doesn’t have kitchen clearance for a reason. “The cereal is on the third cabinet to the right. Joshie will know how to make it.” As Benrey gets up and out of the room, Gordon yells, “And don’t let him open the fridge without his shoes on!”

“Got it, Feetman.” Gordon cringes. Benrey only calls him that when he’s feeling particularly contrite. “Hey, Josh-man! Papa Benrey will get you cereal!”

“Not his papa,” Gordon mutters, closing his eyes and dropping onto his pillow again. Come on, just let him restart this day again. Come on…

Crash!

“Daddy!” Joshie’s panicked voice reached him. “Papa Benny got hurt!”

His eyes instantly open. “Shit—Coming!” he yells, and runs to the kitchen.

Benrey looks at him almost guiltily from the sink. Almost.

“Someone put an uhh… stupid glass next to it. Fell on me and broke.” He raises his hand, showing a piece of glass embedded in it. Oh shit.

“How did it—get so stuck in there?” He grabs Benrey’s hand, looking at the glass yard. Hm, it isn’t _that_ big, thank God.

“I uhh… tried to make an epic catch. Big fail.”

Gordon bristled.”You—”

“Benny slammed it against the wall so it didn’t hit me!” Joshie wails. Both of them look at the boy, who’s staring at the—honestly kinda gruesome—wound beneath his tears.

Gordon’s stomach drops. He suddenly has a clear image of his kid with an embedded piece of glass in his head, in his ear… in his eye.

“Uhh… Freeman?”

His voice shakes when he says: “Joshie, wait outside. Benrey, come with me.”

Joshie obeys, still teary, but Gordon can’t talk to him right now. He’s just so scared, pissed, everything in between.

He almost slams the door of the bathroom closed behind them.

“What is your problem?!” he hisses at Benrey.

“Huh?” Benrey looks dumbfounded. It pisses him off more.

“How can you—I told you not to fuck it up, man!”

“The glass was there,” Benrey says icily. “It shouldn’t be there.”

“It—It doesn’t matter! You need to be more careful! He’s a kid, for God’s sake!”

“It’s fine!” Benrey raises his voice. “Everything is fine! He’s okay. I got hurt; see.” He waves his hand around.

“Just stop! Stop! You—You don’t care. You don’t care that you’re hurt. Of course.” He drops his arms, defeated. “You don’t see—”

“What? What don’t I see?”

They stare at each other. Right there, they’re on the verge of something. His hand moves to grab Benrey’s collar when Joshie’s timid voice breaks up the moment.

“Is Benny okay?”

Gordon coughs. Benrey sighs, deflating. “He’ll be, buddy. Don’t get near the kitchen till I clean it up!”

Joshie is silent for a bit; then he seems to accept it. “Okay,” he says, and Gordon hears his footsteps retreat to the living room.

He hears something fall into the trash bin, and looks back to Benrey. The glass yard is gone, and his wound is closed, as if it never was there.

“Uhh…”

Gordon needs a break.

“I’ll clean the kitchen. Go show Joshie that you’re okay.”

Benrey, for once, silently acquiesces. Gordon thanks God for small mercies.

\-----

The rest of the morning goes more or less normally. Joshie is soon on his way to school, and he finds himself alone with Benrey.

His headache has gotten worse. Cursing, he goes to the bathroom to find painkillers, just to find they run out of them.

“Fuck,” he spits. Benrey can’t be trusted to go buy anything—he’s banned from the nearest 7/11 because he was caught eating the candy’s wraps—“What? They don’t need them,” he’d said.

“I’m going out!” he yells, and slams the door on his way out with a wince. Fuck, he didn’t mean to do that.

His steps guide him to the 7/11, becoming more and more wobbly with each step. It’s become a veritable migraine at this point.

“Fuck, he says, and a woman covers his son’s ears, glaring at him. Not that he pays any mind to it, because soon enough he’s puking all over the pavement.

He hears a gasp somewhere, but he only cares about evening his breathing and stop hurling, for God’s sake. Someone appears to have called an ambulance, because soon there are doctors harassing him, to his discontent.

“Migraine…” he grits between his teeth.

Someone—presumably a nurse—injects him with something and guides him to sit in the back of the ambulance. There he waits, and waits, wiping his mouth and trying to breathe through the pain until, finally, the pain recedes enough for him to recover all his senses.

“Thank you,” he says to the nurse, and weakly tries to stand up.

“No, sir,” the nurse says. “You need to rest. How far is your house?”

Oh, no. He can’t go back home right now. Think, Gordon, think!

A light bulb lights up in his head.

“Can I give you the address? Thank you.”

\-----

Fortunately, Tommy is at home. Unfortunately, Dr. Coomer and Bubby are visiting.

“Hello, Gordon!” Dr. Coomer says, happily as always, as he stumbles with Tommy into the apartment.

“You look like shit,” Bubby says, looking him up and down with distaste. Ugh, he’s still in his puked-on clothes.

“I’ll bring you a change of clothes, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy says, leaving him in a chair by the dinner table, and disappears into his room.

“I feel like shit,” Gordon admits, not feeling up to any argument.

“Was that an ambulance just now?” Bubby questions.

“An ambulance,” Dr. Coomer starts, “is a medically equipped vehicle which transports patients to—”

“Yes, Dr. Coomer, I know what an ambulance is,” Gordon tiredly interrupts.

“So rude,” Bubby quips disapprovingly.

“Yes, Gordon, there’s no need to—”

“I brought the clothes!” Tommy said, arriving just in time. He points at the bathroom. “You can go there and change.”

“Thanks, Tommy, he says gratefully, and heads over there, clothes in hand.

Apparently having clean clothes on is just the signal his body is waiting for, because as soon as he’s finished and has just taken three steps outside the bathroom, his world fades to darkness.

\-----

Next thing he knows, the sun has already set.

He quickly sits up in the bed he’s in. “Joshie!”

“It’s okay, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy says next to him. “Benrey called his mom. He’s staying with her now.”

“Damn it,” he says. Marie won’t be happy. She’s been wary enough of his health ever since the whole Black Mesa incident that she might use it as an excuse to keep Joshie from staying with him. He certainly hopes neither of them mentioned the glass incident.

Fuck. Joshie must have mentioned the glass incident for sure.

“Man, this whole day was shit.” He closes his eyes. “I wish I could, I dunno, relive it.”

“I um… wouldn’t recommend that, Mr. Freeman.”

“I was joking, Tommy,” he says. “Sort of. It really did suck.”

Gordon’s phone starts ringing. His stomach drops. It’s Benrey.

“Um… You better answer it,” Tommy says, and leaves the room.

Fuck, it’s nine p.m. He answers, stomach twirling.

“Hello?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were big hurt, you idiot?”

“Hello, Benrey.” Gordon sighs. “You couldn’t get the meds anyway.”

“Could’ve helped. Could’ve, I dunno, got ‘em somehow.”

“Somehow? What, would you’ve stolen them?” Dead silence. He laughs. “I can’t believe you. All those days following me, accusing me of being a thief—”

“Wait,” Benrey says.

“You know what? No. I had a shit day, man. A really shitty day.”

“Look at Feetman, believing he’s got it worse that everyone else. My day was shit too. So? Get over it. Face the facts. Boo boo and cry all you want—”

“Shut up, dude, just, shut up.”

“I won’t, bro. Because you’re uhh being stupid, bro.”

“Me? Who almost lets my kid lose a fucking eye today?!”

There’s silence on the other side of the line.

“Oh, no. Benrey, wait—”

The line dies. Fuck.

“That was really mean, Gordon,” Bubby says from outside the room.

“Shut—You know what? Yeah,” he says, defeated. Shit. He needs to find Benrey tomorrow and have a talk with him.

Tommy peeks from the doorframe, looking at him with a frown.

“Mr. Freeman,” he says, approaching him. “I’m sorry.”

“Huh? Sorry for what?” he asks.

Tommy takes his wrist, and everything goes dark.

\-----

“Dad!”

Gordon groggily wakes up. Something feels odd. There’s something on his waist—

He freezes.

Joshie jumps onto his belly. Oof.

“Ugh… Slow down, little Freeman.”

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.

“No!” He yells, and everyone freezes. Joshie looks concernedly at him, and he feels the arm around his waist tighten.

“What’s wrong, bro?”

He’s got two sets of eyes on him right now. He gulps.

“First of all, take that off,” he says, throwing Benrey’s arm off him.

“Hey—”

“And secondly, Joshie please don’t jump onto people like that, you could hurt someone.”

“Aw.”

“Your dad’s getting old, kiddo.”

“Hey! I’m not—”

“You are!” both Benrey and Joshie reply. They fistbump over it.

Gordon groans. Tommy, what did you do? At least this is already better than last time—

He remembers the glass incident.

“Guys, wait a bit and I’ll make your breakfast. Go brush your teeth, Joshie.”

“Yay, breakfast!” Joshie throws his arms in the air and climbs down the bed, heading to the bathroom.

He’s more awake this time, thanks to the ugly reminder of—Yesterday? Today? He doesn’t know, but what he does know is that he’ll make sure it doesn’t come to be.

“Wait,” Benrey says, grabbing his wrist.

“What’s up, man?” he asks, impatient.

He receives a peck on the mouth.

“Wha—What the fuck, man?!”

Benrey looks like he’s been slapped. He soon recovers, though. “What, you sleep with anyone? Cringe, Feetman.”

“I—I don’t—” He’s still not ready for this conversation. “Wait here, I’ll get Joshie’s cereal.”

Benrey grumbles, but obeys. Gordon all but runs to the kitchen, where Joshie is retrieving the milk from the fridge.

“Well done, buddy. Now go to the table and wait and I’ll get your—”

“Dad!”

He feels something bump his hand at the same time, and his heart drops. Oh, that glass was awfully placed. He owed Benrey an apology. Then he starts going “Oh, shit, oh, shit,” because the glass is going to break and he’s not fast enough—”

He hugs Joshua and feels something stab his arm. Ouch!

“Dad! You’re bleeding!”

All of a sudden, Benrey materializes in the kitchen, eyes wide. He looks at them, at the broken glass, and takes in Gordon’s injury.

It’s been a while since he’s been genuinely scared of Benrey.

Right now, his eyes burn with an intensity he’s not sure he can handle now, or ever. He remembers, for a moment, whom he’s living with.

“I’m okay,” Gordon tries to reassure both of them. “Just a scratch—” He looks at it. Oh. It’s a quite deep scratch.

“Bathroom,” Benrey all but growls. Right. They all know where the emergency kit is.

“Joshie, stay outside,” Gordon instructs as he’s practically dragged to the bathroom.

The door, this time, does slam.

“Dumb Feetman, can’t get an uhh… fucking box of cereal without losing an arm,” Benrey says, rummaging the cabinet. He rips the kit out of it, unlatching it with enough strength to break a piece out of it.

“Hey! Careful!”

“You uhh… Not careful enough, Freeman. Gotta, uhh… Follow you. Watch over you.”

Gordon feels himself turn red. While he’s not a blushing maiden by any means, and his mind protests the treatment as such, he remembers how _he_ reacted to Benrey’s own injury last time. And what it almost led to.

Well, he guesses they _did_ kiss today. If that thing back there counts.

“First of all, my arm is okay. See?” He moves it around, suppressing a wince. “And secondly, I don’t need your protection, man. Don’t start following me around like a—a freaking stalker or something.”

Benrey huffs, and starts relaxing. He blinks until his eyes look human enough again. “Wasn’t planning to. Dumb Feetman.” He presses a gauze onto Gordon’s wound, wrapping it with tape. “No time for it. Need to, uhh… break my record on Heavenly Sword anyway.”

They both look up from the wound only to find each other’s faces inches away. Gordon can see Benrey gulp mirroring his own. They’re inching closer when a voice stops them.

“Is daddy okay?”

Benrey sighs, and it warms Gordons’s lips. However, he soon backs off, looking annoyed. “Right. Feetman doesn’t kiss.” Gordon’s about to say something, but he doesn’t get to. “Go tell Little Freeman you’re okay.”

He feels a wave of déjà vu at the words, which accompanies him as he goes to the living room, where Joshie’s waiting for them.

“I’m okay, buddy, see? Uncle Benny’s patched it up.” He shows off his bandage—a pretty well done one at that. Benrey must’ve undergone first aid training to become a security guard.

“Where’s Uncle Benny?” Joshie asks.

He hears the front door slam. “He went out for a bit. He’ll come back soon,” he says with what he hopes is a reassuring smile.

Joshie seems to believe him, at least.

“Okay.” He sits on the table. “Benny looked scary back there.”

“Yeah,” Gordon says, thinking back at his intense eyes. “But it’s because he cares.”

“Uh-hum.” Gordon cleans the shards of glass from the kitchen floor, and grabs the cereal on his way out. “He didn’t look dangerous. Not to us.”

Gordon is amazed at his kid’s perception. Yes, those were Benrey’s “I’m gonna kill you” eyes—he knew those better than he’d like to. But this time, while that gaze promised death, it did so at the glass rather than him.

“Yeah,” he says, pouring the cereal into Joshie’s bowl.

“He loves us very much, doesn’t he?”

Gordon almost pours cereal all over the table. He thinks back at the almost kiss. At that long-suffering sigh.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think he does.”

\-----

Joshie has gone to school, and Benrey still isn’t back. That, and the lack of a headache—clearly a tension one, he thinks—gives Gordon time to reflect on what he’s going to do now.

What does he feel for Benrey?

Well, he’s definitely annoying, that’s for sure. But it’s been months since he’s been genuinely angry at him. While the first months he spent there Gordon’s nights had been plagued by nightmares, Benrey had soon decided to do something about it—although not consulting him first. The first time he got bombarded by the Sweet Voice, he almost yelled the whole neighborhood awake.

Later, when he found out Benrey slept on the floor of his room and woke up before him just to not be noticed, Gordon almost blew a fuse and insisted on them sharing the bed. Which led to moments like this morning. Or last morning. He doesn’t know anymore.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy those warm moments. And he did, indeed, want more. It was his pride what put itself in the middle. Admitting he _actually_ liked Benrey was a step he hadn’t been ready to take. Up until now, at least.

Benrey has become so entangled in their lives that it was almost impossible to think of not having him in them. And Gordon finds, at that moment, that he doesn’t mind.

Suddenly, his phone rings. It’s Benrey.

He hurries to take the call. “Hello?”

“Hi, Mr. Freeman,” a familiar voice answers.

“Tommy? What are you doing with Benrey’s phone?”

“It seems Benrey’s got lost, Mr. Freeman.”

Gordon’s stomach drops.

\-----

They decide to split up to find him. Dr. Coomer and Bubby go to check at the park, Tommy goes to the supermarket and Gordon thinks. Thinks. Where can he be?

What would an upset Benrey do?

He sees a couple of kids run, talking about how they’re gonna beat each other at Street Fighter II, and he realizes.

The arcade.

And indeed, that’s where he finds him. He doesn’t know how he’s amassed such amount of coins, but he seems to have been playing Ms. Pac-Man for a long time.

“Hi, man,” he says, sitting next to him. Benrey jumps, and curses as he loses a life.

“Go away, Feetman,” he says. “I’m busy.”

“You’re worrying everyone, that’s what you’re doing,” he replies. “Come on, dude.”

“Not leaving.” He’s practically pouting.

Gordon makes a decision. “Alright,” he says, and puts a coin into the second player slot. Pac-Man appears in the right corner of the screen.

Benrey frowns. “You suck at Pac-Man, bro.”

“So do you,” he retorts, which is true. They’re both more comfortable at console gaming. But they’re both on even ground at this point.

Benrey huffs.

They play in silence for a while. They don’t have any trouble with the first couple of levels—Gordon would even say they’re getting farther than they would alone.

Then, Benrey starts talking.

“Don’t bother, bro,” he says, grabbing one of the big orbs. The ghosts turn blue. “I know what you’re thinking. ‘Boo-boo mean Benrey, fell in love with the fucking uhh… hero of the game.’ I don’t want your pity, Feetman.” Ms. Pac-Man viciously bites into a ghost, and Gordon’s heart stutters.

“What if I told you you’re wrong?”

Benrey looks at him from the corner of his eye, still playing. “Don’t think so.”

“But you are,” he says, scoring his own ghost. “I don’t think that at all. Well,” he admits, “I know that you love me.”

Benrey winces as one of the turned-normal ghosts almost gets to him. “See? Point taken. Not gonna bother you again, bro. I’ll leave as soon as—” 

“Wait, wait, wait,” Gordon says, grabbing another big orb. “This is what you got all wrong. I don’t pity you. In fact, I’m happy.”

Benrey stops to stare at him, Ms. Pac-Man hitting a wall. He grunts, looking back at the game. “Dick move, Feetman. Won’t do your bidding, or protect you forever. I’m no one’s maiden. Or bodyguard.”

“That’s not—Wait, can you let me finish?” he says, getting increasingly frustrated. “What I’m saying is that I want you with us, Benrey. With me.”

“Are you deaf or something? I said—”

“Oh, for God’s sake—”

Gordon grabs Benrey by the collar of his hoodie and kisses him.

Benrey’s eyes go wide, then close. Gordon’s eyes close, too. They both lean into the kiss, savoring the moment. They hear the sound of one lost life, then another, and they don’t care, not at all.

Until a security guard comes and kicks them out of the arcade.

“This is not a kissing booth,” he warns. Benrey growls at him, but Gordon takes him by the wrist and drags him away.

\-----

“So.”

“So. That happened,” Benrey says, sitting in the couch at home.

Gordon agrees that it’s hard to talk about this kind of stuff, but they need to.

“Alright, I’m gonna put all my cards on the table. I want to be with you, Benrey. I wanna argue with you. I wanna watch my kid grow up with you. And I really, really wanna kiss you again right now. Okay?”

“Uhh…” A pink orb of Sweet voice comes out Benrey’s mouth, and he swallows. “Wait,” he says. “Lemme uhh… Damn it. Words are no good.” He lets out more pink and blue orbs. “You know what I mean?”

“Um… I could make Tommy translate—Wait, Tommy! They’re still looking for you!”

“Oh. Oh, no. Tell them I’m okay, bro.” Gordon starts texting Tommy the news and a heartfelt apology. “But no way, bro. Too embarrassing. Uhh…”

“Um…” Gordon blushes. He just received Tommy’s answer. “You should have told me Mr Freeman! :( And pink followed by blue means I love you.”

“What is that?” Benrey asks, suspicious.

“N-nothing!” Gordon replies, pocketing his phone.

“Uh-huh…” Benrey says, narrowing his eyes.

“Tommy is mad we didn’t tell him you’re okay.”

Benrey’s eyes widen. ”Damn.”

Gordon groans. “We’re going to get so much shit from the Science Team…”

“Uhh… Whatever, man. They’ll understand. They always do.”

“Yeah…” He thinks back to last time, when Tommy helped him after the migraine. They aren’t afraid to give him shit when he fucks up, but they’re always there. They have faith in him. In all of them.

Benrey fake-coughs. “Whatever. Uhh… What I meant is, uhh…” His cheeks redden. “That sounded epic, bro. I wanna do that too. I’m sad you don’t remember but uhh… I’m glad you feel like that, bro. Gordon.”

Gordon, not for the first time, wonders what there is to remember. But he brushes aside the thought in order to focus on more important things. Like hugging the shit out of this man. “Come here.”

Benrey hesitantly approaches, and Gordon embraces him in a big, heartfelt hug. Benrey relaxes into the embrace, hugging back. “Bro… What a good hug. Such wow.”

“Are you seriously quoting a meme right now? Why am I surprised?” he laughs, and feels Benrey shiver as his breath hits his neck. They come apart, just to get back together in a slow kiss, this time much less desperate than before.

As he bites gently into Benrey’s bottom lip, Gordon feels everything’s right. However, he thinks he’s forgetting something…

“Joshie!” he yells, disengaging Benrey with a loud smack. “I’m late to pick him up!”

“Oh, shit. We suck at parenting.”

“Oh, shut up.”

\-----

They pick up a pouting Joshie at school. Gordon has to bribe him with an extra round of Puyo Puyo before going to sleep in order to make sure he doesn’t tell Marie about it. Benrey snickers at his struggle, which earns him a glare.

“I can bribe you too, you know.”

“What, are you gonna kiss me? I accept no other bribes.”

Gordon pecks him on the lips, and Benrey’s cheeks go pink.

“Uhh… Bribe accepted.”

“Daddy, that means Uncle Benny is my papa now?”

Gordon remembers that morning. It feels so long ago. He’s gotta thank Tommy when he sees him, after apologizing again. That text sounded angry for Tommy’s standard. But things are definitely better right now.

“I can be your papa if you want,” Benrey says, looking at Gordon for confirmation.

To hell with it. “Sure, why not?”

“Yeah!” Joshie celebrates, and fistbumps Benrey. “Papa Benny is super cool!”

“You know what?” he whispers to Joshua as soon as Benrey is in the car. “Yeah. He is. Don’t tell him I said so, though. He’ll get ideas.”

Joshua pouts, but complies. Or at least, tries to. “Okay, dad.” He says as Gordon adjusts the security belt around him. “I won’t tell Papa Benny you said he’s cool.”

Benrey’s laughter comes from the passenger seat, but, to be honest, Gordon doesn’t care. Even if he gets a headache or two, he definitely is the asshole he wants to live with. And he wouldn’t trade him, or Joshie, for the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Er I know I posted something just yesterday, but the warm reception gave me strength to write this thing last night dsjdsfjk thank you very much! ♥
> 
> This started as a Groundhog Day!AU but I got impatient (as always) and frankly, I didn't want to write the same day again and again. Which is kinda dumb, I know. But whatever.
> 
> Thank you very much for reading! ♥


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